by Thomas Webb
“Through a woman named Therese Truveaux,” Montclair replied. “She’s running for a recently opened Confederate senate seat.”
Mockingbird frowned. “Forgive me. New Orleans was never one of my areas of operations. I’ve never heard of this Truveax.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, agent,” Montclair said. “I’m from the Crescent City, and I’ve never heard of her.”
Abe wrinkled his brow. “I still don’t see how an unknown senate candidate helps Smythe achieve his goals.”
Montclair nodded. “It’s because that unknown senate candidate also just happens to run a criminal empire spanning New Orleans, the Louisiana Territories, and the Lone Star Republic. Not a card game, opium deal, or courtesan’s business arrangement happens without her organization getting a cut. She holds the keys to everything west of the Mississippi and south of the Dakotas. With her support, Smythe locks down every square mile of those territories. And all the resources that come with them.
“And from there, we think his next move will be setting his sights on building alliances across the Atlantic. With the support of the full Confederacy and Texas behind him, he’ll be too powerful for the countries of Europe to continue to ignore. The Healer forbid he sways any of them to his side.”
“If he does,” Colonel Gregory added, “it’s a certainty he’ll come for the Union. We’ll go to war again, and the odds won’t be in our favor.”
“An outcome we do not intend to let come to pass,” Montclair said.
“What about Copperhead?” Athena asked. “And the Department? Where do his rescue and the Strategic Intelligence fit into all this?”
“The Union comes first,” Colonel Montclair said. “Always.”
Scarlet felt Colonel Montclair’s dark brown eyes boring into her. She looked up and met his gaze, resolute.
“The Union comes even before the welfare of our comrades,” he said. “No matter how much we care for them.”
Duty. It was something Scarlet understood, even in the midst of being betrayed by the very organization to which she’d pledged her life. It was something Copperhead understood, too.
“But,” Colonel Montclair continued, “that’s not to say we don’t take care of our own. After the events of the last year, Scarlet and Copperhead fall into that category. Scarlet is here with us, but we haven’t forgotten about Copperhead. First, we’ll review our objectives and decide how best to achieve them. Afterward, we’ll discuss finding Copperhead and getting him out of whatever shithole DSI has him stashed in.”
“I’ll second that,” Mockingbird said, “and the sooner the better. DSI is in trouble, Colonel, and Athena, Scarlet, and I and will take all the help we can get in righting the ship.”
“Good,” Montclair said, “because we need you and your protégé to contact the Office of the President. We need you to let the executive branch know what we know - that McCormick is a traitor.”
“That will be… difficult,” Mockingbird said. “Athena and I are both persona non grata with the Department. We’re on the run as well. Every constable, bounty hunter, and paid killer between here and the Canadian border will be looking for us.”
“And then there’s the small matter of convincing President Grant to take the word of two traitorous spies over that of DSI leadership,” Athena added.
Montclair smirked. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
Mockingbird harrumphed. “Indeed.”
“Get word to Mrs. Grant, tell her Greg and I sent you with the message,” instructed Montclair.
Mockingbird eyed him curiously, but didn’t protest.
Scarlet, her spirits lifted by what she was hearing, spoke up. “Whether the President believes you or not, we’ll do what we’ve been assigned. Then we’ll find Copperhead - on our own if we must.”
“’Tis always better to beg forgiveness than ask permission,” Colonel Gregory said.
Scarlet smiled. “Exactly.” Gregory was speaking her language.
“What about Scarlet?” Abe asked. “With both the Colonels focused on their objective, me on mine, and Mockingbird and Athena out in the cold… she’s on her own.”
Montclair grinned. “I have some friends who owe me a favor. I’m sure they’d be more than willing to give Scarlet a hand. For now, let’s start with you walking us through your mission, Bookkeeper. I know you have to get back before you’re missed.”
11 Maryland Countryside - Hills Above a Pasture, September 1866
Kingfish lowered the spyglass and took a swig from his flask. The liquid burned his throat, warming him to the roots of his soul like a kiss from a long-lost lover. He made a low, rumbling sound of satisfaction, already salivating at the thought of his next drink. He placed the telescoping glass back to his eye. The image of Abe’s brute, standing motionless in the open field next to the airship, wavered in and out of his drunken vision.
“Hunh,” Kingfish grunted.
The only living creatures in view were two Union Army Air Corps regulars, who’d apparently had the foul luck to draw gangplank guard duty while in the middle of nowhere, Illinois. Other than the guards, there’d been no movement since Abe had arrived and boarded the airship.
Done for the moment with his drink, Kingfish twisted the flask’s cap back on tight. Kingfish sat atop his own brute, strapped into the seat to prevent another accident. The nasty tumble to the ground last time had resulted in a broken arm.
“Bah!” he said to the machine, nearly dropping his spyglass in the process. “They think I’m just a drunk, don’t they? I was one of the best in this game, once upon a time.” Careful to maintain his grip on the silver flask, Kingfish beat his chest. “Tradecraft rivaling even the great Copperhead himself!” He unscrewed the cap of the flask and took another swallow.
Two full turns o’ the clock since Abe had left him where he lay, passed out in the DeSoto Hotel, the fine establishment where they’d taken lodging.
“Joke’s on him, innit?” Kingfish slurred to himself. He reflected with pride how he’d only been half acting when he’d blacked out. He grinned at his own cleverness, at how he’d lulled the boy into a false sense of security with the whole ‘drunkard’ act.
So this was it, then, the thing his protégé had been up to, slinking about these past few days? Abe was conspiring with someone on that sky boat, someone formidable if they had an eagle-class Union airship at their disposal.
Kingfish peered through the glass and squinted. With the light of the full moon, he could just make out the markings on the hull: USS Vindication.
The Vindication, was it? Kingfish put a closed fist to his mouth and belched, the reflux a bit more hot and liquid than what he’d bargained for. He swallowed the mouthful of pre-vomit and tried to focus. Who was it that commanded the Vindication?
Kingfish scratched his head. “Dammit,” he muttered. The name escaped him at the moment.
There was a time, maybe not so many years ago, when he remembered the names of all the commanders of all the airships in both fleets, Union and Confederate. That was a time before he’d lost his way and gotten mixed up in all this. A time before McCormick and his blasted trickery. Kingfish’s heart beat faster, the anger rising fast and blazing hot, flushing his cheeks, head, and neck a furious blood-red.
In a sudden fit of rage, Kingfish hurled the flask into the bushes. “Dammit all ta hell!” he hissed, spittle flying from his lips.
Kingfish looked off into the darkened shrubbery as realization of what he’d done set in.
“Ah, shit,” he muttered.
He grumbled as he unstrapped himself from his brute and clambered down to the ground, somehow managing not to break his neck in the process. After a few minutes of searching, he found the flask and put it back into his worn coat pocket.
Soon, he was strapped back into his brute, spyglass up and examining the airship again. He’d have to take off as soon as he saw young Abe coming down that gangplank. On his return trip to the hotel, Abe would backtrack his rou
te several times to make sure he wasn’t being followed. Kingfish, on the other hand, had no such similar concerns about a tail. By taking the most direct route back to the town of Galena, Kingfish would easily beat his young protégé back to their rooms.
Kingfish opened his flask and licked his lips, anticipating the sweet taste of the Crimean brandy. He held the flask aloft, high above his open mouth. Eyes closed, he tilted the flask back and waited for the taste of heaven to splash onto his palate.
A second passed. Then two. Fearing the worst, Kingfish ventured to open a single eye. He frowned.
Empty.
Then, a smile split his face. Somewhere from his brandy-addled brain, a thought had registered. He remembered there was a fresh bottle of Crimean brown stashed in the nightstand by his bed.
With a little luck and a stiff drink to lubricate him, he’d have a full report ready to send to McCormick by morning. Well, maybe noon at the very latest.
12 The Mississippi River - Onboard the Lady Luck, October 1866
The smell of the river was earth, mud, water, vegetation, and rot. A scent that once had been so familiar in his youth now seemed alien. It hit Montclair before he even caught sight of the river, well before he stepped foot onboard the Lady Luck. Now, a full day into the journey to New Orleans, he watched as the caramel-colored water parted like silk before the proud riverboat’s bow.
A trickle of sweat slithered its way down Montclair’s spine. He’d forgotten how the humidity turned the world into a steam bath, how the air itself seemed to transform into hot, wet soup. He’d forgotten how the damp clung to his skin, letting him know in no uncertain terms that after all this time, Montclair was headed home.
With Greg and the other members of his crew making their way down separately, Montclair had the run of Legree’s five-story floating palace of gambling and sin. It was the first days of Le Temps de Mascarade. Or, as it was simply called in New Orleans, ‘Masquerade’. Without the fear of being recognized, Montclair could move about as he pleased. He wore a black velvet mask, plaster and fur fashioned to resemble the face and snout of a snarling wolf. He took full advantage of his disguise, observing all he could then hurrying back to his stateroom, where he scrawled pages of coded notes, each describing in painstaking detail as much of the magnificent riverboat’s layout as he could recall. Scarlet would need those notes when the time came to plan her part of the mission.
Montclair hadn’t see Scarlet’s target when he’d boarded the vessel. He’d been disappointed to learn that the Gambler was away from his riverboat home, traveling on business. Montclair frowned at the thought. Information on the Gambler’s security routines would have been invaluable to Scarlet, but with Montclair’s reconnaissance notes, Scarlet would at least have a complete view of the boat’s layout.
Not only had Montclair been gathering intelligence for Scarlet’s mission, but he’d also picked up some useful intel for himself. People’s tongues tended to loosen considerably at the poker tables, even more so when wine and greenbacks were introduced into the mix. Montclair glanced at his pocket watch. Noting the time, he turned away from the mighty river and headed up a set of stairs. A sign above them showed a bright red arrow, pointing up. The text beneath it screamed at Montclair, “This Way to Games of Chance!”
Montclair followed the arrow up a set of stairs. He found himself walking through an arched passageway, a press of well-dressed men and women, most of them masked, surrounding him. He entered the second deck’s casino room, weaving in and out between the tables. The room was a cacophony of spinning wheels, laughter, and clinking glasses, air thick with the smell of hand-rolled cigarettes, spilled whiskey, perfume, and sweat.
Montclair took an empty chair at what had quickly become one of his favorite tables. He sat next to a woman, a Cajun grande dame of the type he’d seen so often in his childhood. Her skin, so white it was near translucent, hung in soft folds from her wire-thin frame. She wore a mask of pale pink silk adorned with gleaming freshwater pearls and delicate feathers.
Montclair nodded to the clockwerk dealer and tapped the green velvet tabletop. Several cards appeared before him like magic.
Fifteen minutes later, Montclair was up twenty greenbacks, and the old woman had already propositioned him twice. Both times, he politely declined, even though it had been a while for him.
Montclair and the old woman chatted as they played, Montclair mining for nuggets of information the whole time. The best lies were fruit borne of the seeds of truth, so to gain her trust, Montclair volunteered that he’d been away for ten years. The conversation inevitably turned to the old days. Thanks to some clever prompting from Montclair, the discussion shifted to who was running things back then. It was unavoidable, his mother coming up at some point.
“Oh, yes,” the old woman said. “Much has changed in the Crescent City in ten short years.”
The mechanical dealer called, and Montclair showed his cards. He placed them in ranking order, a Jack of Hearts leading the way.
“Regine the Creole Queen,” the woman continued. “Now that’s a name I’ve neither heard nor thought of in quite some time.” She laid her own cards down for Montclair and the dealer to see — a queen, beating Montclair’s jack. Fitting.
The grande dame scooped up her chips. The clockwerk shuffled and threw them fresh cards.
“Things have surely gone downhill since Regine passed. Gossip was she loved that general of hers something fierce. Rare to find such love born of a plaçage match.” She looked off toward the river outside the windows and smiled, the look of it almost wistful. “But such a thing isn’t meant to last, est ce?” She picked up her cards. “Memory fails me in my old age… Regine’s general… I can’t seem to recall that man’s name.”
“Montclair,” the colonel offered, picking up his own cards.
She snapped her fingers. “That’s it. Montclair. Phineas Montclair.” She winked at Montclair from behind her pink feathered mask. “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? And so handsome, too. I can tell, even behind that mask.” The grande dame caressed Montclair’s face with a gloved hand. “Mon Dieu,” she hummed. “Just look at that jawline. Sure you won’t take me up on my previous offer? We can leave the masks on. No? Oh, very well. Now what was I saying?”
“General Montclair,” Montclair said, surveying his hand. A pair of fours. He sure hoped he got some good intelligence from this because his luck at cards had obviously turned to shit.
The old woman smiled. Her jowls sagged, but she showed a mouthful of surprisingly white and intact teeth. “Ah, yes. Phineas Montclair. Of course.” She shook her head. “My mind isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, Phineas Montclair was Regine’s great love. She was his, too, or so I hear it told. Rare for a white man to feel such for his Creole placée. Rarer still for one to so honor his left-handed marriage the way Montclair did. Wasn’t a year or two after she passed before he followed right behind her.”
A sharp pain pierced Montclair’s heart at the mention of his mother’s passing. Her funeral had been one of the grandest New Orleans had ever seen. The governor himself delivered the eulogy. The mourners spanned the social scale, from the rich and powerful rulers of the city all the way down to the lowliest river rats. All had been fed that day and fed well per the final instructions of Regine Desdunes-Montclair’s last will and testament.
Montclair had stood beside his father for most of the long ceremony simply because he had no one else to stand next to. He’d stared at his mother in her polished mahogany casket — a coffin fit for a queen — her body stiff and still, face caked with a thick layer of pale corpse paint. What lay there was not his mother, not even the shell of her. The thing in the casket was a horrible mockery of the beauty she’d radiated in life.
It was the only time he ever recalled seeing his father, the great General Montclair, cry. Noticeably absent was anyone from his father's other family. Maintaining two separate families, one white and one Creole, was common in New Orleans. Plaçage, it was calle
d, the pairing of young Creole women with white men of means, sometimes contractually. It spanned generations, stretching back to the 1700s, well before the decline of slavery and the rise of the clockwerk.
The dealer produced a brand-new hand. It distributed the cards with a deft flick of its piston-driven wrist, the soft whisk of cards on velvet bringing Montclair back to the present.
The grande dame peeked at her cards and set them back down before continuing her talk. “As I recall, Regine and her general had one son. Disappeared not very long after the funeral, nowhere to be found. I imagine he’d be about your age by now.”
Montclair nodded politely, pretending to ponder his cards. He’d wasted little time leaving after the death of the one thing binding him to New Orleans. He’d gladly fled to West Point, his father’s alma mater, in order to escape the pain of his mother’s passing. Soon after the beginning of his second academic year, whispers of the South’s secession spread like black tendrils throughout the nation. The scent of coming war seemed to drift on every breeze. A few years later, Montclair chose to side with the Union, making a return home nothing short of impossible, even if he desired it.
After four years at West Point, he hadn’t much cared that he’d missed his father’s funeral. He’d been plenty well-occupied with graduating the academy and the preparation required to become a young officer. He’d heard his stepmother and his brother had given their father quite a home-going. Now, listening to this old woman expound on a man he’d grown up around, but whom he’d hardly even knew, Montclair felt conflicted. Perhaps he’d try to visit his father’s crypt if he could manage to sneak in one night?
Montclair studied his hand. Sevens high. He frowned, poker face be damned. Pathetic. He threw away three cards and plucked up three new ones to replace them.
“So, what happened after the Creole Queen passed?” he asked, keeping his voice as even as possible. Talking about his mother was like salt in an open wound.
